Hi, I am having a startup problem with a Power Mac G4 I recently got from a friend. They have no idea about which version the computer has or what is wrong with it. The problem is that when I turn on the computer it makes its mac startup sound and then stays at a white screen with a grey apple and nothing else. I have not owned a mac for 8 years or so and I really want to get this one to work (I miss Macs). One thought that I had was that the hard drive was formatted. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Jurpab

Assuming there's no important data on the drive, I would say you should go right ahead and try a reinstallation of Mac OS, and hopefully you have the disks. If that doesn't work, then you've got a hardware problem, which is more serious.

(From the sounds of it, I would guess that your computer is running Mac OS X.)

December 10, 2007

Have you tried joining a Mc User Group in your city? You could google a search by entering Macuser group and the name of your city or similar searches.
They might have a meeting where you could bring in your mac for review by others.
I hope it works for you

my iBook had similar issues it would start up and then just be a black screen or a white screen and it had a hard drive failure so I would take it in to a repair shop and let them look at it.